Ray Kwong is a cross border business development geek and a Forbes contributing writer. He is currently facilitating talks between China and U.S. interests on such matters as clean energy economics, nanotechnology, commercial aerospace and business aviation. Previously, he was a strategic planning and marketing advisor to a number of Fortune 200 companies including Bank of America, Disney, Edison, McKesson, Sun Microsystems and Time Warner. He is also senior advisor to the USC US-China Institute and a charter member of the Asian International Business Advisory Group, established to promote bi-lateral trade between China and the U.S., most recently serving as its chair of strategic planning. While it sounds way cooler than it really is, he is also a member of the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board and the McKinsey Quarterly Executive Panel. You can follow him on Twitter @raykwong. Eyeball Ray's posts from Forbes ChinaTalk. Read Ray's posts from Forbes ChinaTracker.

9/05/2012 @ 9:31PM716 views

Beijing's Problems All Come From Washington

Chinese President Hu Jintao meets with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on September 5, 2012. (Source: Feng Li/Getty Images AsiaPac)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s swing through Asia has been marked by a revelation in Beijing: the source of all China’s problems with its neighbors is the United States, writes Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

China’s state-owned media supports this proclamation in full:

People’s Daily: “The United States should use action, rather than lip service, to reassure China on the motives behind U.S. return to Asia and Pacific.”China Daily: “The US should refrain from being an instigator of certain countries’ attempts to encroach upon China’s interests.”Global Times: The U.S. pivot “has intensified disputes between Asian countries, stirring up tensions between China and its neighbors.”Xinhua: “The United States should stop its role as a sneaky trouble maker sitting behind some nations in the region and pulling strings.”CCTV: “We hope [the United States] will keep their promises and do more that is conducive to regional peace and stability, not the opposite.”

First, take the South China Sea. Tensions in the region—particularly between China and Vietnam and China and the Philippines—have been heightened over the past year. However, conflict between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea has been a fact of life for almost forty years. The year-old U.S. pivot did not create the problem nor did it exacerbate it. U.S. policy has been consistent.

Second, the United States is not a puppet master, “sitting behind other countries” and “pulling strings.” Countries in Asia are replete with intelligent leaders and diplomats. They are fully capable of debating the issues surrounding the U.S. pivot and making their own decisions about how to interact with China and the United States.

Third, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is not a plot against China; negotiations for the agreement started in 2007, well before the current tensions and the pivot (the original negotiations did not even include the United States). The TPP is an effort by the United States to realize the economic benefits of deeper engagement with the most economically robust region in the world—much in the same way that China has done for decades. Moreover, China is welcome to join the TPP under precisely the same conditions as any other member, the United States included.

Fourth, security relationships in Asia are not exclusionary. China and the United States each have military-to-military relations with a wide range of countries throughout Asia (including with each other), and those countries have security ties among themselves that engage neither Washington nor Beijing.

You can come to your own conclusions, but Economy and others attribute China’s problems in the region not to change in U.S. policy but to “more assertive Chinese rhetoric” and posturing by hawkish senior military officials.

As reported by the New York Times, “some generals and admirals have loudly called for the government to assert control over the South China Sea, the focus of increasingly rancorous territorial disputes between several Southeast Asian countries and China, where nationalist spirits are on the rise among the public and politicians as well.”

Economy maintains that “it is not about the United States assuaging Chinese concerns; it is about China assuaging the region’s concerns.”

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